Every mobile phone in the future will have local network interfaces such as WiFi, NFC, Bluetooth, Zigbee in addition to cellular interfaces. Through the local interfaces, users using their mobile phone are able to reach local services in home network, car network, hotspot, hotel rooms, shops etc. In order to enjoy these local services, users need to setup local specific configurations that are mainly concerning configurations of local interfaces. However, it is still a difficult task for IT-unfamiliar people to configure a device to use a network. Even for IT-familiar people, it's still cumbersome because for example WiFi security configuration involves several steps of clicking buttons and entering a password for generating a WEP/WPA key and the situation gets worse even for technicians if they forget a password for the WEP key. This problem occurs because those local interfaces, unlike cellular interface, are not provisioned with initial configurations when a mobile phone is started; therefore a user is always required to input local configurations in his mobile phone to adapt to the local setup. In this way, a user is confronted with an excessive set of configuration parameters to be manually input. This may lead to the user not attempting the usage at all, or failing in it. In other words, the user may give up when the user has to type in all the letters and numbers in the different hard-to-reach places required to configure.
US20060178131 proposes a system in which a mobile phone searches an SSID in the vicinity and sends the found SSID to an application server. The application server queries a corresponding access point to get a WEP key, which is finally sent to the requesting mobile phone. EP2044785A2 proposes an automatic registration and configuration system for an in-building cellular base station. JP2005286782 proposes a system in which configuration parameters such as SSID and WEP keys are generated at the application server and the configuration parameters are sent to both the AP device and the terminal.
However, the SSID would be still unfamiliar and hesitate to use the SSID especially for the IT-unfamiliar people. Therefore, it is desired to provide a technique for providing configurations of a local network more easily.